Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Crop Chocolate is holding a spring fling crop in Utah this weekend. Yay for all the crafty ladies who get to go!! Those of us left behind are going to have some fun too! My crop challenge is to do a walk in the beauty of nature. The challenge here is to create a project (using at least 50% CC supplies) that has something on it that you would find in nature (like a flower, a tree, a frog, etc) Simple, huh?

Projects are due by FRIDAY, JULY 6 at 9 a.m. MST. I'll draw a random name from submitted projects of followers of my blog for my blog candy prize! I'll announce it on Monday, July 9 on cropchocolate!

The blog candy includes

1. 7gypies "Friends" acrylic stamps
2. Sweetheart red inker (I took it out of the package before I realized I already had one!)
3. Two packs of Making Memories design shop stickers
4. Fancy Pants "Arctic Chill" Rub-ons
5. DCWV "sayings" for a cat

Here's the project I created as an example. It's a sympathy card for someone I work with who lost his grandfather. It includes TWO elements from nature (bird and flower).

Sunday, June 24, 2012

So, I've taken the plunge into blog-dom! I've been going to a crafting website a LOT (http://www.cropchocolate.com), and all these wonderful talented ladies have blogs. Since I got accepted into their focus group, I thought, "why not do a blog too?" Maybe it'll make me more talented? (ha ha) I have found that my crafting style is to get some idea of what I want
to do, and to add "just one more thing" until I get to a result I like.

For my very first blog post, I decided to scrap my oldest son's graduation celebration. Welllll, I love the Echo Park Paradise Beach paper I got from Crop Chocolate because it's so bright and cheerful. Perfect for a summer lay-out!

Step 1 - I attached my pictures to a beige paper (trimming close) in the paradise beach collection then attach it to the polka dots....and then I cut about 3/4" inch off.

Step 2 - I die-cut my letters and fussy cut one of the blue flowers and
applied glossy accent to them. (I did this on wax paper. They're really
gooey, so they had to dry overnight.)

Step 3 - With the same paper that I made my letters, I cut a couple accent pieces and rounded the corner.

Step 4 - I cut some of the blue pattern paper with the Nestabilities die and also a scrap of white. The stickers are part of the EP kit.

Step 5 - The lay-out needed just one more thing....so I cut a strip of blue paper and used a Martha Stewart punch to create the small scallop trim. I used another Martha Stewart punch to create the rings you'll see later. I cut strips of paper and fussy cut the bottoms to make flags.

Step 6 - I thought the flags looked "sorta" plain. They needed just one more thing, so I pulled out a small star punch and punched a bunch of stars from scraps. I decided to glossy accent them too.

I twisted some twine around a couple of places (because it needed just one more thing - ha ha!) and added some buttons....and